Showing posts with label middle-age. Show all posts
Showing posts with label middle-age. Show all posts

Thursday, September 15, 2022

Still Learning...(or, Hard-fought Gratefulness)


Happy Half-way though September!
We easily see the halfway mark of a month...
not so with a life!
But one thing is certain for we plowing through forties, fifties and beyond,
barring the exception, we have well surpassed the halfway point of our lives!
Wow! How much I don't know that my younger self thought by now I would!!

'Live and learn' has become my middle-age mantra.
Still so much to learn!



I was going to post this poem this morning after the first stanza
then I felt a little niggle, like another stanza jiggling the door knob,
so I opened it...
The door turned out to be a floodgate...of things still being learned!😅


Still learning to give holy thanks, to think before I speak
To seek and prize the lowly ranks of ‘blessed are the meek’
To cling less fiercely to the string of Things and Plans unfurled
To make the shadow of God’s wings, my refuge in this world
To lay up treasure where no vice corrupts, mars or defiles
To weigh the payoff, not the price of walking ‘second miles’
To not rebel beneath the ‘nope’ of mercy’s faultless rod
But, to anchor my hope in steadfast promises from God
To keep the faith, not disillusioned by what blurs my view
As breath by breath, death closes in, till ‘still learning’ is through

To count my blessings, not life’s lack, to make the most of now
Before tomorrow’s looking back beholds its rendered How
To trust the Love that withholds wants and wishes for my good Best
To teach me how to better bow without proud, loud protest
To stun me with the goodness of His all-sufficient grace
As wonder over wonder floods the would-be commonplace
To satisfy my longing with the whisper of His Name
He helps me press toward the mark until faith’s prize I claim
…to cast before His throne, the honor of crown upon crowns
To hail our Heavenly Father faithful through life’s ups and downs

To yield, with all my heart, not just a small part, now and then
To know that He is able and changeless for aye, amen
To commit to His keeping all I do not understand
To fit my doubting fingers through the nail-holes in His Hand
To place my cares, prayer upon prayers into ‘Thy will be done’
To put on God’s whole armor to withstand the evil one
To ask Him to set a watch over the door of my lips
Because, oh Lord, how easily the unbridled tongue slips
Still learning how to listen, to be slow to anger, oh
Still learning to keep turning to the One who loves me so

Still learning to linger in Time’s showcase of majesty
Where fringes of God’s glory overflow sky, sod and sea
Where EL OLAM, Eternal God, thought cannot comprehend
The rock of my salvation and my nearest, dearest friend
Still learning to be awed by God’s resolute holiness
Still learning to be patient when His answer is not ‘yes’
Still learning to remember what I ought not to forget
Still learning how to follow the example Jesus set
And how to keep my balance on the beam of consequence
While I harvest the bitter fruit of disobedience

Still learning to esteem and redeem precious, numbered days
While learning to keep leaning on God’s very patient ways
Still learning to depend upon His Word that will not fail
(Sometimes I share a chuckle with the mirror’s telling tale)
Glad for a sense of humor while I weather what I must
Bearing in mind what will survive this grind of dust to dust
While learning through mistakes I wish I would know nothing of
The tender pangs and aches of highs and lows that come with love
And learning, while still learning not to miss the measure earned
Of triumph’s hard-fought gratefulness for truths and lessons learned

© Janet Martin


How precious is Your loving devotion, O God, 
that the children of men take refuge in the shadow of Your wings!

O LORD, do not withhold Your mercy from me; 
Your loving devotion and faithfulness will always guard me.




Saturday, September 10, 2022

September Stage...



Aren't you glad fall is not a bully, but eases summer hearts toward the door of season-change
with such a pleasant demeanor we cannot be too sad...

Fall flutters in on zinnia-wings...

...on sedum's demure blush

Beneath a sweep of cumulus and nimbostratus skies
Soybean fields glitter with impressions of bronzed butterflies


Fall shimmers in on misty morning glory mantled stairs...



Fall flutters in on zinnia-wings and sedum’s demure blush
On cinnamon and cardamom and ginger-burnished bush
Beneath a sweep of cumulus and nimbostratus skies
Soybean fields glitter with impressions of bronzed butterflies

Fall moseys in while we get cozy in sweaters and socks
While harvest spills and toil refills jars, bins, barrels and crocks
While amber ambience begins to steep the atmosphere
With the sweet-bitter sense of summer’s farewell drawing near

Fall eases in where trees begin to tell the tender truth
How even earth cannot preserve verve of eternal youth
But yields its hills and fields to the law and order of God
Who orchestrates the floodgates of bud and seed, sky and sod

Fall shimmers in on misty morning glory mantled stairs
It gleams in streams of golden rod, in purple aster-flares
It loiters in the orchard where the apple tree is bent
With proof of summer’s fond, fruit-laden, fading testament

Fall tints the countryside with hints of ‘what must be will be’
Before the End of Summer is declared officially
Like the turn of the tide fall starts to flow across a shore
With ripple over ripple until summer is no more

Fall sparkles in September's winnowing of summer's ties
September, like a harbinger with kind and laughing eyes
Is gently drawing autumn's door ajar before the rose
Has strewn its petals on the floor of summer's curtain-close 

© Janet Martin

Happy Sweet, September Saturday!





Monday, April 18, 2022

We, The Up and Comers (to the Sunset Years)


Heb.2:1
Therefore we ought to give the more earnest heed to the things which we have heard,
lest at any time we should let them slip...

This poem is written from a middle of middle age vantage point...


Gorgeous sunset the other evening but no freedom to wax poetic just then...

We tend to feel a bit like trees
Weathered and buffeted and tossed...




We tend to find as time goes by
And insolence of youth relents/repents
That the voice of choice will reply
Without a doubt, with consequence

We tend to learn as years accrue
Beneath the sparkle of the splash
The vault of ‘What I Thought I Knew’
Is quite depleted of its stash

We tend to feel a bit like trees
Weathered and buffeted and tossed
By winds of wild epiphanies
And olden ways to progress lost 

Then we tend to muzzle bold boasts
Attuned to time’s fading applause
We tend to raise much meeker toasts
To wisdom’s blunder-riddled cause

We tend to taste its grain of salt
In stumble-humbled middle-age
With empathy, rather than fault
Those struggling on a hard-knock page

Beneath the tutelage of Time
We tend to learn as we advance
There is so much more to life’s climb
Than can be appraised at a glance

…and how too oft we disregard
The common ground beneath our feet
How everyone’s ‘uphill’ is hard
And love lives, not on Easy Street

We of a more middle-age class
Chastened and jarred by season-swirls
Sense a Baton we soon must pass
To up and coming boys and girls

Beneath the sovereignty of clocks
We tend to be startled to find
How swift the classroom door unlocks
To students, never far behind

Thus, we should attend above all
What we tend often to forget
The aftermath of the footfall
Weaves someone’s path not travelled yet

© Janet Martin




Thursday, June 24, 2021

On Going Through The Change...

They don't call it The Change for nothing, my sister and I conceded as we
lamented some of the maladies of middle-age😓
As I pondered this it made me think of a few other changes
that we should, by God's grace, go through
(and some that eventually we will) by God's promise, 
go through...

***

Some changes are anticipated eagerly,,
like the change a new baby brings
or winter warming to spring
Others we would dodge if we could,
But changeless God, if we allow Him
works change for our good!

***

Always day changes to night


then night to day...

Change challenges and teaches us
It vexes and delights
It startles and beseeches us
With ruthless appetites

Oh, nothing stays the same for long
In life’s foray of days
The hand of change is sure and strong
Insisting on its ways

Both good and ill do not stand still
As surge of seasons roll
Change wistfully winnows until
All that remains is Soul

Change tempers us and teases us
The wrinkles it bestows
For all the ways it squeezes us
The least of our woes

Change changes us, estranges us
From who we used to be
A slow and steady genesis
To immortality

© Janet Martin

Behold, I tell you a [m]mystery: 
 shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed— 
52in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, 
at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, 
and the dead will be raised incorruptible, 
and we shall be changed.
1 Cor.15:51-52


So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, 
that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking. 
18They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God 
because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts.
  19Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality 
so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, and they are full of greed.
20That, however, is not the way of life you learned
  21when you heard about Christ and were taught in him in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus. 22You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, 
to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; 
23to be made new in the attitude of your minds;
  24and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.

Colossians 3:9-10
Do not lie to one another, since you laid aside the old self with its evil practices, 
and have put on the new self who is being renewed to a true knowledge 
according to the image of the One who created him—







Friday, March 27, 2020

Age Appropriating...


As the full bloom diminishes
true Beauty remains...




Happy Birthday, Lucy,
A beautiful woman inside and out!
Hope it's a memorable day in spite of social-distancing. Wink 😉
 God bless and keep!
A light-hearted post in the middle of lots of serious conversation💕


At our age we ought to be
Content to sit, knit and drink tea
Or so I thought when were still
A whole lot younger and much more care-free

At our age I thought we would
Be purely sensible and good
Forgetting that which was behind
We’d be laid-back grandmas doing everything we should

When we were half our age or less
I thought by fifty-something-ness
We would be quite the patient pro
At letting go of things back then we couldn’t even guess

Where happiness, pray we have learned
Is found in days soon un-returned
And we had better make the most
Of moments kissing us with wrinkles laugh-lines squarely-earned

At our age we ought to be
Sedate and very matronly
But just between the two of us
Let’s stay a little nuts because it suits us perfectly

© Janet Martin




Thursday, May 30, 2019

Middle-age Mother's Musing...





To let go without losing wonder
To sense on the tense tides of change
So much yet to master and ponder
So much yet for time to estrange

Where torn between worlds past and future
The present runs rife with life’s charge
And wounds that no surgeon can suture
Slashed deep in the heart of the barge

Where it is too late to untangle
Loosed threads that have severed their ties
While we are still trying to wrangle
The rebel that rouses our sighs

And rushes like winds through the wild woods
Charging like a maddened platoon
That crushes the bloom of lost childhoods
To shards shaped like echoes of June

Where oft, like a soft summer’s vesper
Time’s Maestro immerses the breeze
With murmurs of morrow and yester
Of maybes and memories

© Janet Martin


Friday, November 30, 2018

From a Middle-aged Poet to Those Testing Deep Word-Waters




I am too old to be fooled by your lies
Though you dressed them in the best disguise
Of words that slip smooth from the tongue
And would have seduced me when I was young

I am too old to be caught off-guard
By the flattery of a wanna-be Bard
Where unchaste word-play is no longer enough
To convince me of matters as serious as Love

I am too old to unlearn well-set traits
I don't have the energy for scholastic debates
Forgive me if I seem antiquated because I rhyme
It is all too true, you can blame Father Time

I am too old to be bothered by years
Or the threat of youth as it disappears
I am not in your debt for an apology
If I am not impressed by your undressed vanity

I am too old to shrug off your mistakes
And I’ll always love you, no matter what it takes
Because someday you’ll look back (if my prayers come true)
To feel like a mother to poets like you

© Janet Martin